Weiss – Ebene Noir 72%

Another “everyday chocolate,” this is to be consumed not for delicacy or complexity but rather for satisfying chocolate cravings. Being neither imposing nor challenging, it’s easy to eat and carries with it a slight bitterness to complete its burly package.

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Reviews

Alex Rast: 8-May-2007

SCORES

Score/10

Weight

Aroma:

10%

Look/snap:

5%

Taste:

35%

Melt:

5%

Length:

15%

Opinion:

30%

Total/100:

100%

INFO

Best before:

Batch num:

Source:

Supplied by:

In theory a good strong high-percentage chocolate, this one instead comes out weak and insipid. A truly baffling lack of flavour indeed leaves the question open as to whether this is actually chocolate or an imposter who took its place. Weiss certainly doesn’t seem to have tried very hard with this chocolate, at least not for any flavour depth, and the result is a chocolate that dead-ends in a hurry.

The visuals of the bar inspire some confidence, with a nicely smooth and unblemished surface and a pleasing brown, not too alarmingly dark. Finish isn’t quite a perfect temper, so it looks slightly dull, but otherwise the stage appears to be set for a decent chocolate.

Aroma hints at a Pralus-like style, all dark, with coffee and cocoa predominating. Some earthy and brown sugar notes round out the nose but with one significant problem: lack of intensity. It doesn’t come across with any force and this lack of authority is worrisome.

The taste confirms those fears. After an initially promising start with melon and blackberry, and a move towards molasses that looks as though the chocolate may really be a winner, it dies altogether. There is just no flavour. One might as well be eating slightly bitter wax. Perhaps by straining one might notice a hint of nuts here, a suggestion of citrus there, but these are so faint that it seems equally plausible one is simply creating these sensations in the mind to make up for a flavour that doesn’t appear to exist. It’s a chocolate that’s been completely emasculated.

Texture doesn’t fare that much better either, more or less squarely average. Neither creaminess nor smoothness distinguish it. And again, that’s more or less the summary of the bar: nothing distinguishes it at all. Did someone swap the real chocolate gem for a glass copy while we weren’t looking? It’s certainly what this feels like: a pallid, unconvincing imitation of something beautiful and sparkling.

Hans-Peter Rot: 20-Mar-2006

SCORES

Score/10

Weight

Aroma:

10%

Look/snap:

5%

Taste:

35%

Melt:

5%

Length:

15%

Opinion:

30%

Total/100:

100%

INFO

Best before:

Batch num:

Source:

Supplied by:

Brown just like the wrapper, here’s a bar of ordinary stature with a near flawless appearance if not for the air bubbles and somewhat dull sheen. Aroma is also ordinary yet potentially desirable, being neither nor here nor there, but betwixt and between the borders of decency and just plain average. Orange stands above the cinnamon and tobacco crowd to add the only commendable highlight to an otherwise woody overkill.

Cherry cordial enters the scene along with a decent chocolaty tone, but not strong enough, likening itself to a mild version of SantanderÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s 70% that has lost is flavorful soul. Some acid is present, too, in the background, while orange tags along for the ride before the chocolate finishes on a bitter note. Texture is not as desirable as it is odd, melting with irregular clumping amidst an otherwise smooth melt.

Curiously, an interesting flavor but one that just doesnÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t excite or arouse much reason to return to the bar. The flavors taste too washed out and linear to stick out as obvious peaks, thus making it possible to taste this chocolate without ever “”tasting”” it, so to speak, much like seeing a ghost but not being able to touch it due to a lack of physical substance. In fact, this is exactly what the chocolate is like, lacking body and substance, being only a ghostly apparition of what real flavor should be.